Monday, July 28, 2008

A Picture Is Worth Years Of Therapy

I received this cunning little sketch last week, and it has been sitting on my bedside table while I decide its fate. To scrapbook, or not to scrapbook? To consign to the bottom of the dustbin, or to frame and display in the front hallway? To deconstruct as artifact of postmodern motherhood, or to roll eyes at and discard?

A fistful of Smarties to anyone who can tell me what it is, or at least make some outrageously funny suggestion so that I can appropriate the narrative of this sketch and reframe it into something that won't keep me awake at night. Which, yes, is a hint.

(It's two sketches, actually. The scribble below the fold is a separate image, scrawled with a flourish to underscore a point about the main image, above the fold.)

It looks like someone who needs their bangs trimmed, has a prominent nose with a mole beside it and they are sad because of one, two or all of those things. That bit on the bottom is them trying to remember the name of their hairstylist - they are fairly certain it doesn't begin with an M.

See, when *I* look at it, I see a lovely spider with an egg sac. That would keep normal folks awake at night. That would get me running for my macro lens to take pictures of all its eyes. And maybe the babies too. Because I'm a sicko.

That's the look I had in the shower the other day when a pregnant mama spider was spotted post-soap, pre-rinse and I knew I couldn't get away. She looked as though she was doing the I HAZ A MILLION BABIES AND I"M GOING TO SPRAY THEM ALL OVER YOUR NAKED BODY dance.

to me it says "Loach Pain." Loach, (not) meaning that smooth spot between the vajayjay and the rectum, was coined during a Balderdash round 15 years ago. It's really some kind of fish... which could also be a good title for this piece.

It looks like a duck to me, can't make out the bottom. Please don't take my input seriously, I have been in therapy for years and now one of my daughters is due to her father's terminal illness. My favorite drawings were always the large round circles with big round eyes and limbs shooting out from the widest part (kinda looked like chicken feet). I love the one we have of four circles and the only difference is my husband's green eyes vs. the three girls with blue eyes. We all spend years trying to analyze how we've f**ked up our children through their art, welcome to the club.